


come up from the water

by andnowforyaya



Series: spiderman!youngjae [3]
Category: B.A.P, GOT7, K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Character Death, Crushes, Gen, Guidance Counselors, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Identity, Training, Violence, but no one in BAP dies okay i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Youngjae puts on the mask and the suit, but it will take more than that to make him feel like a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Youngjae ducks but almost too late - he feels the heat of fire brush against his face, singeing the little hairs at his temple, and he crashes to the ground.

Mark is there, suddenly, his silent and coy smile right up against Youngjae’s nose. Mark touches his shoulder and Youngjae’s stomach twists, his vision blacking out for a millisecond, and then he is behind one of the metal columns lining the perimeter of the training gym.

He wants to hurl. He thinks he’ll never get used to teleportation, especially when Mark doesn’t give him a warning. “Thanks, sort of,” he manages instead of getting sick everywhere.

Mark grins, and then he disappears again.

“Too close, Jackson!” Hyosung shouts, from the platform overlooking the floor. “The objective is to ‘save the civilian’, not _burn Youngjae to a crisp,_ let me remind you.”

Jackson pauses in his fire-throwing, and Youngjae thankfully has a moment to catch his breath. He’s sweating from the heat and from the exertion, but the physicality of the training exercise makes him feel strong and clean, like he’s sweating out all of his impurities.

“Mark has a soft spot for newbies,” Junhong had told him wryly, just a few minutes before. “So he’ll probably help you out at least a little.”

Youngjae isn’t exactly _new,_ not anymore. He’s been training at the Institute now for a few weeks, but it’s true that he’s still the newest member. They’ve only been putting him through agility and speed drills, strength tests and physical training, obstacle courses that have grown gradually more dangerous as time passed. Today is the first time they’re pitting him against others in the training gym, lovingly called the Red Room.

He wants to believe it’s called that because of the single red stripe running horizontally around the entire room along its walls, and not because of anything more...violent.

Today the Red Room is essentially a maze. Or, it _was_ a maze, until Jackson blasted through much of the plaster that made up the maze's walls in order to reach the center where the ‘civilian’ was sitting before the other trainees, Mark and Youngjae, could do the same. Now the floor of the gym is more like a field of jagged half-walls and barricades for the first few outer rings of the maze. The center is still intact, the maze’s walls there nearly brushing the ceiling.

“He was in my way!” Jackson shouts back, blowing his hair from his face.

Mark laughs, quiet and pleasant, from somewhere inside the maze.

“You’re going to lose to Mark again,” Hyosung teases from the ceiling.

Jackson launches a small fireball at her, but she waves a hand and it veers off its path and slams into the wall instead, leaving a black streak.

“Focus,” she reprimands sharply.

Jackson turns back to the maze. And then he yelps.

The problem with Mark is that once he’s seen where he’s going, once he can envision it perfectly in his mind, he can go anywhere. With the maze changing every time before they begin, he’s as much at a loss as the others getting to the center, but he can pretty easily teleport back and forth, getting to know the maze’s interior, and he uses this ability to set the others back.

Jackson is standing now at the very edge of the training room, like he hadn’t even started.

Youngjae seizes the chance while Jackson fumes. He catapults himself up and across the training room floor, shooting webbing at a break near the center walls and pulling himself toward it on the way down. He hadn’t been able to before, because Jackson had been solely concentrating on burning all his webbing like they were candlewicks.

He lands and runs into the part of the maze still standing, sprints to the end of the corridor and turns the only way he can, left, and continues.

The hairs on his arms tingle, and his ears ring. Youngjae ducks and somersaults to his right, just as Mark appears behind him in a cloud of smoke, and flails in the spot Youngjae has just vacated.

They glance at each other.

Mark smirks, playful.

Smoke erupts when he teleports, behind Youngjae, to his side, in front of him, and it fills up the corridor quickly, diminishing Youngjae’s field of vision and irritating his lungs. He dodges every hand Mark reaches out to him, every time, until Youngjae coughs from the smoke, and Mark catches him in the chest, his hand like a brand.

Youngjae reacts. He shoots out webbing and it connects to the wall of the maze, and his stomach twists and his vision blacks out for a millisecond, but then he shakes his head and...he’s still in the same place, and Mark is gone.

A moment later the alarm bell rings, signalling the end of the exercise.

“Mark!” he hears Jackson yell, with vengeance. “ _Ugh_.”

Youngjae jogs back in the direction he came, a little out of breath from the short face-off with the teleporter, and sees Mark carrying Junhong on his back near the edge of the floor of the gym. They are both smiling while Jackson scowls.

“Mark: 4, Jackson: 1, Youngjae: 0,” Junhong announces. “I think that was a record, even. Mark’s never saved me so quickly. I usually, like, fall asleep sitting there for so long.”

“It wasn’t fair,” Jackson complains. “Youngjae got in my way. He has no idea what he’s doing.”

“He made it farther than _you_ ,” Junhong retorts, sliding from Mark’s back. He towers over both of the other boys on his feet.

“That’s because Mark _let_ him!” Jackson snaps, growing red in the face.

Youngjae approaches them, but hesitates joining. Even though it’s been a couple of weeks, he hasn’t quite gotten comfortable with the group, hasn’t quite dissected their dynamic and what role he plays with them. Mark and Jackson have known each other forever, since California (whatever that means to them), where they still shuttle back and forth from now, and Junhong is so direct and amiable that it’s impossible not to find his awkward contributions endearing.

Youngjae just feels awkward.

Junhong says, “Don’t be a sore loser,” and Jackson almost lunges for him.

But Mark taps him on the shoulder and says, “Jacks,” in a low voice, that ever present curve to his lips softening the unspoken rebuke, and Jackson stills.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine! Baby Youngjae all you want. That will definitely help him improve his skills.” Jackson throws his hands up into the air, exasperated. Youngjae is still trying to figure out if he’s always this dramatic or if he only acts this way in front of his teammates. It seems exhausting.

“I don’t mind,” Youngjae quips, grinning a little.

Junhong claps his hands together and laughs, and then he goes and drags Youngjae over to join them.

Above them, Hyosung’s voice echoes.

“Take ten. Debrief in room 21-4. Come ready to talk about what you will do next time to improve. Junhong, the Professor wants to see you.”

“Oh,” Junhong grabs Youngjae’s hands. “You want to go back home together after this? I’ll probably miss the debrief.”

Mark and Jackson turn away and the training room’s sliding doors open for them, as Jackson loops an arm around Mark’s shoulders in easy brotherhood.

“Sure,” Youngjae says to Junhong’s bright eyes. “Want me to wait for you?”

“Nah,” Junhong says. “I’ll probably be done first. I can meet you guys in the lobby, I guess. Okay. Cool, see you!”

He lets go and dashes off, out of the sliding doors and to the elevators.

Youngjae follows, much slower, and takes it all in again.

He’d thought TS Tower had been impressive. This tower is one of Stark’s, and everything inside seems to be made of bulletproof glass, or gilded in titanium. There’s a snack machine at the end of this hallway, and then the hallway leads into the entrance to the locker rooms. Above this level there are at least fifty more levels; Youngjae’s never been to the top floor.

Mark is standing in front of the snack machine alone, staring at its contents.

“Where’s Jackson?” Youngjae asks him.

“He wanted to go up early.” Mark’s voice never seems to raise above a stage whisper unless he’s angry. “But the real question is, Twix or Kit Kat? Or both?”

“Both,” Youngjae answers immediately, nodding. “Besides, Jackson will probably want one.”

“You’re so right.”

Mark presses the buttons for both, and they watch the candy drop to the tray. He takes the bars out.

“You know,” he says. “You’re pretty good. Jackson’s all power and bulldozer, but you could have some real finesse.”

Youngjae flushes, the tips of his ears growing hot. “That’s -- ah. No, um.”

“It’s true,” Mark presses. He smiles and looks down at the candy in his hands. “Here.”

Youngjae catches the Kit Kat bar that’s tossed at him.

“I just remembered that we both like Twix,” Mark says, shrugging. He steps past Youngjae and starts walking to the other end of the hall, where the elevators are.

Youngjae says, a beat too late, “Thank you!” as the elevator doors open and Mark steps in.

He grins at him, and waves.

.

After, as promised, Youngjae goes to meet Junhong in the lobby, which is a ridiculous, echoing space that Youngjae thinks would be better suited to reside inside a modern castle. There’s someone else with him, and they’re chattering away at each other, their voices mixing pleasantly. Junhong has on his backpack with his skateboard strapped to the bottom of it, the hood of his jacket already pulled up around his pink-haired head.

Youngjae squints at the black hair and sun-kissed skin and then the guy turns around and Youngjae almost trips over his own feet stepping out of the elevator, because it’s Daehyun, with a new hair color and shorter cut and a smile that doesn’t quite stretch as far as it used to, but he’s got his camera around his neck and layers upon layers of clothing on, making him seem bulky and soft.

“Surprise!” Junhong calls, the word echoing.

Daehyun laughs.

“Look who came out today to see us! I told him to meet us here. That’s okay, right?”

Youngjae walks up to them. His hands reach out of their own accord and he’s tracing his fingers up Daehyun’s arms before bringing him into a hug, pulling up short when Daehyun gasps.

“I’m still a bit sore,” Daehyun whispers into Youngjae’s ear, but he hugs him, too.

The last time Youngjae had seen him, Daehyun had been silver-haired and fragile-seeming in a giant hospital bed, looking like he was just waiting for the blankets to smother him in his sleep. Youngjae had visited a few times after the first, bringing Junhong with him once after getting permission, but their conversations were always cut short because Daehyun would fall asleep, tired out from healing or the meds, or from speaking with one of the hospital’s social workers, or from dealing with the psychiatrist.

After Daehyun had asked to speak to an officer with the social worker about his step-father, the hospital had responded with interviews and tests and sessions: with Daehyun’s step-father alone, with his mother alone, Daehyun alone, in pairings, as a unit. Social services investigated the house.

Youngjae had watched Daehyun grow more and more withdrawn with each visit; he was losing hope things were really going to change and on the verge of shutting down. Youngjae has seen him pull away before -- once, in the eighth grade, after a week-long absence from school, Daehyun had returned like a shadow of himself, dark around the edges and emanating something hostile. This time, Youngjae thinks, it's almost worse, because he knows what's happening now and still can't do anything to make it better.

They told Daehyun he would be living with his Aunt Mehae and her son while social services drew up a plan to ensure Daehyun could safely return to his own home. Brian was mandated a course on anger management and regular weekly counseling. Despite all the evidence, his position as a member of the police force seemed to bias everyone in his favor. They all believed he could change.

Youngjae and Daehyun hadn’t even talked, that day, when he went to visit. He’d just held the other’s hand and brushed his hair back from his forehead when it looked like Daehyun was about to cry.

“I didn’t know you were being released,” Youngjae says, stepping back to survey him. Daehyun seems whole, though maybe skinnier than before, his cheeks not as full as they had been. “How do you feel?”

“You might have to carry me to Jongup’s,” Daehyun says, his fingers catching on the sleeve of Youngjae’s jacket, reluctant to let go. “I’m a little winded, to be totally honest.”

“Oh, god,” Junhong says. “Oh, god. I didn’t even think about that! I shouldn’t have asked you to come all the way out here. Oh, man. Wow. Way to think, right? I’m sorry!”

Daehyun blinks quickly, like he’s remembering that Junhong’s next to them, and laughs again. “It’s fine. It’s fine,” he says, but he has to stop laughing and press a hand to his side, grimacing.

The elevator doors slide open then, and Mark and Jackson step out, Jackson chuckling about something while Mark bites at his lips. They are dressed similarly in jeans and leather and boots and Youngjae is struck suddenly by how _cool_ they are, as comfortable in their civilian skins as much as in their strangely comfortable Stark-grade kevlar-enhanced spandex suits they all wear during training.

"So I was like," Jackson is saying, "back off, man. She said to leave her alone. I mean, am I right?"

Mark nods his head as they reach the others.

"Hey? Who are you?" Jackson asks, quickly changing gears. He holds his hand out.

Daehyun lets go of his light grip on Youngjae's sleeve to shake it. "Daehyun. I go to school with these losers." Daehyun inclines his head to Youngjae and Junhong, and smiles brilliantly.

Youngjae almost takes a step back. He hasn't seen that smile in a while.

Junhong ruffles Daehyun's hair. "Who are you calling a loser, huh?"

"Mostly Youngjae, I guess," Daehyun teases, but he hooks arms with him at their elbows, and something settles in Youngjae's chest, like a lock catching.

Jackson raises his eyebrows at the movement but doesn't comment on it, lips curled up in a grin like a cat's. "I'm Jackson. This is Mark."

Mark shakes hands like a politician. Daehyun flushes, and Youngjae finds himself tightening his arm against his side, bringing Daehyun closer to him.

"You guys up to anything?" Jackson asks, pulling out his phone.

"We were just --" Youngjae says, but Junhong interrupts.

"We're going to watch a movie. Youngjae, Daehyun wanted to see the new Scorsese? I thought, I mean, it was going to be a surprise -- my treat." He looks at Youngjae imploringly, his eyes large and hopeful. "To kind of. Celebrate."

Youngjae looks across at Daehyun's face. He has shadows under his eyes and his skin seems thin, stretched at his jaw and neck and vulnerable. He doesn't look like he should be celebrating. Youngjae frowns, and Junhong shuffles his feet.

It's a sweet gesture, Youngjae acknowledges, but perhaps not timed correctly.

"I don't know if --" he starts, only to be interrupted again, this time by Daehyun.

"Let's go," he says, teeth white and flashing. "Especially if Junhong's treating, right?"

Junhong's smile swells across his face.

"What are you guys celebrating?" Mark asks.

“Me,” Daehyun says, grinning hugely when Junhong loops an arm around his neck, careful. He ruffles Daehyun’s hair again and Daehyun squawks, squirming away from them both to cover his head.

Junhong follows him around the lobby, wiggling his fingers, and Youngjae’s features soften watching them. He wonders when they got close. But then he thinks that it doesn’t seem to take much for Daehyun to get close to someone, anyway.

Jackson taps him on the nose, and Youngjae startles, blinking.

“So? Movie?” he asks.

Mark rolls his eyes.

“Oh yeah,” Youngjae says slowly, mind coming back into focus. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, unsure. “Did you guys want to come with us?”

Jackson shrugs. “Yeah? I mean, we don’t want to be the fourth and fifth wheel, here. But Mark’s been wanting to see the new Scorsese, too.”

Mark says, “Don’t project.”

“So _I’ve_ been wanting to see it, too,” Jackson huffs, squinting at Mark.

“Yeah,” Youngjae nods. “It’d be - fun. And Hyosung’s always going on about how we need to get to know each other outside of the Tower, too. So.”

“Oh, my god, this isn’t an _assignment_ ,” Jackson says. “So technical. Don’t overthink it, yeah? Bleh.”

But he’s laughing as he says it.

.

The movie is long. At one point, Daehyun falls asleep and uses Youngjae’s shoulder as a pillow. Youngjae taps him gently to wake him.

“We can go if you want,” he tells Daehyun, whispering as Daehyun gazes up at him.

“No,” Daehyun says. “This is nice.” He lays his head back down.

Youngjae shifts again, to push the armrest between them up so Daehyun can get more comfortable.

He’s asleep again within moments.

.

He watches Baekhyun reach forward, linking pinkies with Daehyun outside the entrance of their homeroom. The two friends are just visible at Youngjae's angle, and he can focus in a bit and listen to their conversation if he really wanted to, but considers that to be borderline creepy and possibly a misuse of his powers.

The school had been closed for a few days as a crew cleaned up the debris from the explosion. The chemistry labs are still taped off. Their homeroom is now squeezed into one of the English classrooms that hadn’t been used before as homebase. It’s not nearly as large as the chemistry room was, so their desks are pushed together so closely that sometimes he has to turn sideways to walk down the aisles between chairs.

Baekhyun swings their linked hands and Daehyun laughs, eyes crinkling up at the corners, and he lets Baekhyun tuck his chin into his collarbone and hug him. They stand very still together for a moment, and when Baekhyun draws back, he sniffs, rubbing under his eyes with his knuckles.

He glances up, suddenly meeting Youngjae's eyes, and Youngjae averts his gaze, flushing and looking out the window instead. Youngjae hears the other boy chuckle.

Baekhyun says, "I better get going before Youngjae goes Hulk on me. He's all green."

“Oh, you have no idea," Daehyun murmurs, and Youngjae can clearly imagine the way his eyes would glimmer at the implication.

He grunts when Daehyun slides into the desk next to him, still looking away. "Morning," he mumbles.

"Morning, Sunshine," Daehyun chimes.

Youngjae turns to him and freezes. His face is too close, the curl of his lips suddenly too intimate. He feels himself flushing again, the heat intense.

Daehyun says, "You've got an eyelash," and brushes the pad of his thumb across Youngjae's cheek.

The bell rings, and then Himchan saunters through, striding back to the empty seat next to Youngjae. He plops into his seat heavily, and promptly lays his head on the desk.

The teacher takes attendance.

“Oh,” Himchan says. “Welcome back.” His lips lift minutely at their corners, and then drop down again.

“Thanks,” Daehyun whispers, sharing a concerned glance with Youngjae at Himchan’s entrance.

Youngjae shrugs. Himchan has been moody and terse since last week, and he knows from experience that it will all come rushing out in a venting diatribe, likely in the booth of some diner in the middle of the night.

He’s patient.

.

Daehyun’s Aunt Mehae’s place is just a few stops on the train, and Daehyun assures Youngjae that his aunt won’t mind, and neither will his cousin. They won’t be home, anyway. Mehae is working and Jongup has gone to the dance studio after school for practice.

“They’ve been really great,” Daehyun says, kicking at a rock on the sidewalk on the way. “Really.”

“I’m glad.” Youngjae takes one of Daehyun’s gloved hands in his as they walk, pleased when Daehyun ducks his head with a small smile and steps closer.

The apartment is cozy and small, cramped in the corners with odds and ends. Youngjae steps over a pile of magazines on the floor and deposits his backpack onto the couch in the living room that connects the kitchen to the bedrooms. There’s a small television in a shelving unit on the opposite wall, its nooks filled with books and framed pictures and more stacks of magazines.

He sheds his winter coat and scarf onto the couch as well when Daehyun goes into the kitchen.

Youngjae hears cabinets opening and closing, and then dishes clanking, as he investigates the pictures.

They are mostly of Jongup, growing up. There’s one of Jongup as a young child, frowning in front of a ride at an amusement park. One of a woman and Jongup in front of a theater holding a small trophy. One of Jongup and a group of other boys all jumbled together, in what looks like a studio.

He almost has to search for it, but Youngjae discovers a smaller picture, this one faded with age, in a simple frame: a much younger Daehyun with his arm looped around a much younger Jongup’s shoulders, holding melting ice cream cones in their hands and wearing huge smiles.

So Daehyun’s always smiled like that, Youngjae thinks. Fondness pulls at his heart.

Daehyun comes back into the living room with two glasses of water and a plate of sliced apple wedges, and sets these things onto the coffee table.

“Oh,” Youngjae says, nodding at the plate. “You didn’t have to.”

Daehyun shrugs. “I focus better when I’m snacking. That’s not a surprise at all, is it?” He grins, impish.

“I guess not.”

“So let’s do this. Thank you, by the way.”

They sit. The couch dips toward the middle, and pushes their thighs together. Daehyun is warm against his side in a worn t-shirt and does not move away.

“It’s not a problem,” Youngjae says, gulping. “You didn’t miss that much in Chemistry, anyway. I’m sure you’ll get caught up soon.”

Daehyun tilts his head, very close to laying it on Youngjae’s shoulder. “That’s sweet. You obviously have no idea how much Chemistry I’ve actually missed.”

They have to start with material from the middle of the semester. It’s not that Daehyun didn’t learn it; it’s that he had other things on his mind, other concerns that seemed far greater in importance. He picks it up quickly, as Youngjae explains, connecting the bits of information he has managed to retain throughout the year to the pieces Youngjae supplies to make sense of it all.

His hand stays on Youngjae’s thigh, steady and inconspicuous, until the door knob jiggles and he snatches it away.

Jongup enters. He has earbuds in, and he doesn’t notice them at first, even though the couch is in plain view of the door, and bobs his head as he slips off his shoes. When he turns and sees them sitting so close together, he narrows his eyes for a tiny moment before removing his earbuds and waving, his face growing brighter as he smiles.

“Hey,” he says, stepping forward.

Youngjae stands. Daehyun makes a small noise of surprise at the sudden movement.

“Hi. Jongup, right?” They shake hands.

“And you’re Youngjae. You were at the hospital,” Jongup says, nodding. “You visited a lot.”

“Was it really that much?” Youngjae finds himself mumbling, his face growing hot. “I just - I just had the time, I guess.”

“Uh huh,” Jongup says.

“How was practice?” Daehyun has drawn his legs up onto the couch and is sitting cross-legged now, leaning against the back cushions. “You’re earlier than usual.” He sounds faintly accusatory.

Jongup raises his eyebrows. “It was good. We finally finished the choreography, so now we just have to get it down. And yeah. I’m earlier than usual. Why? That put a damper on your plans?” He smirks, playful.

“What are you even talking about?” Daehyun says. He’s blushing.

“I should tell you,” Jongup begins, looking at Youngjae. “That I’ve become very protective of my cousin, you know? So if I ever think you’re mistreating him…”

He doesn’t finish the threat, and he’s still smirking.

“Oh, my _god_ ,” Daehyun groans. “You’re _so embarrassing_. Leave right now.”

Jongup chuckles, steals an apple slice, and does a little fancy footwork as he walks to the bedrooms, taking the door on the left and shutting it behind him. Muffled music vibrates the walls soon after from his room.

Youngjae sits back down, Daehyun’s knee pressing into his hip.

A moment passes, and then Daehyun sighs. “Please let’s not be weird about this,” he says. “We can just -- I’ll just--”

He sighs again, and then the cushions shift as he reaches for the remote and turns the television on.

Youngjae clears his throat but says nothing. He wants to be sitting close together again, sides pressed against each other, but doesn’t know how.

The news is playing. It’s a story that is being shown again from the other day - a thief who was thwarted and mysteriously ended up in a holding cell with all his stolen goods, all without the police having ever unlocked the cell. No reports of missing keys, either. Youngjae watches, and thinks it looks suspiciously like Mark’s work.

“Sounds like magic,” Daehyun says. “Is that a thing? Do you know? Now that you’re, like, one of the gifted and talented?”

Daehyun’s eyes are bright with interest. He’s sitting back against the cushions and nonchalantly laying a crooked arm across his ribs. Youngjae wonders if they still hurt.

“I think it is?” Youngjae starts. He sits back, too, shifting on the cushions and sinking into them. Their shoulders touch. Daehyun looks down and sucks his bottom lip into his mouth.

He wondered when this would come up again. He remembers how his breath had caught when Daehyun had whispered his name at the school, half a second away from the ground and curled up in Youngjae’s arms, his face pressed into his neck. He had been giddy and light on his feet, after, as he launched himself back into the fight with Cobra, had even given chase when Cobra started to slink away. That Daehyun knew it was him without Youngjae ever having told him -- it just seemed right.

“It’s not like I suddenly know everything about super powers and stuff, now, though. There isn’t a secret club.” He frowns, looking away, because he realizes that the Institute at Stark Tower East is basically that -- a secret club.

“Oh?” Daehyun says, grinning now. “Are you sure? You look like you’re not sure.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Which means it’s something,” Daehyun presses. “It’s always something, when you say that.”

Youngjae stares at the homework in front of them on the coffee table. With a grunt, he pulls himself to the edge of the seat again and picks up a pen. “So let’s go over the properties of valence electrons, again, right? I think you’re almost there.”

“Why don’t you want to talk about it? You didn’t want to talk about it in the hospital, either. What’s wrong with talking about it? I think it’s so cool that you have all these things you can do, Youngjae.”

There is something open and honest about the way Daehyun is looking at him that makes Youngjae want to spill all of his secrets.

How can Youngjae explain to him, though, the way the city suddenly closes in on him whenever he thinks about his powers outside of actually training, outside of being in the field? His strength and his speed, his reflexes and agility. Youngjae walks around now in battle armor, and hears every cry for help, every battle to be fought, in all the five boroughs, if he loses focus for just a moment. He feels like he’s always on the edge of a migraine.

The city flows through his veins, calling out to him.

But he’s still the same person, right? Just with a couple of enhancements. He still wants to finish high school and get into a good college to study engineering, and he still wants to be able to hang out with his friends. Youngjae swallows. “I just...It’s bigger than that, Daehyun.”

He looks at him. When he’s around Daehyun, focus is almost easy. He grew up with Daehyun, or at least tackled puberty with him, but he’s wrestling with the thought that something is changing between them, and he’s worried that the only reason why it’s changing is because Daehyun knows he’s Spider-Man. His hero.

“Fine,” Daehyun says, pouting. “Fine, be a buzzkill. Let’s do science.”

.

Daehyun doesn’t bring the superhero stuff up again. Not for the next few weeks, anyway. He’s busy, catching up with Baekhyun and pitching ideas for the paper and blog to Yongguk, ensuring everyone that he’s fine. Youngjae sees him in homeroom in the mornings and when he walks him to the train in the afternoons, and he wonders if Daehyun thinks about him in the times between as much as Youngjae thinks about Daehyun.

Even though he should really be thinking about Himchan’s ever increasing quietude, or the texts Jackson and Mark and Junhong send him in the middle of the night, asking him if he wants to come out to patrol with them, or if he wants to get pizza, or if he wants to hang out again after training.

He goes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, now, and it’s grueling.

School is starting to turn into this limbo where he doesn’t really have to think about the information being thrown at him to understand it, shuffling through classes like a zombie until Daehyun shows up by his locker after the last bell and everything shifts into focus like through a camera lens.

He’s got no idea how the others at the Institute do it. How do they go to school and train and have friends and still feel like normal human beings when they wake up in the mornings and not like sentient lead weights? Is he really cut out for this?

“Hey!”

His stomach lurches as he’s teleported away, narrowly being hit in the face by a paintball. Today, the training area has become what Youngjae calls a firing range and Hyosung calls agility practice. At least they’re using paintballs and not steel pellets. It’s like dodgeball but more painful and messy when you get hit, and your only weapons are the gifts you’ve been given.

Unfortunately, that puts Mark totally in defense during the minute-intervals of rapid, mechanic firing, with Jackson dodging and tumbling the best he can and spitting out fire and incinerating some of the heavier shots, and Youngjae catching or stopping as many as he can in webbing.

The timer buzzes and the firing halts. Above them, Hyosung shouts, “Get your head in the game, Youngjae!”

Youngjae pants. He’d been distracted, but only momentarily.

He shakes the fringe from his eyes and looks up at her in the viewing platform. She’s glaring. She turns away.

Mark pats him on the back. “Maybe you should take ten,” he suggests.

Youngjae struggles to smile but shrugs him off. He shouldn’t need to take ten. He just needs to stop thinking about things that aren’t of any concern right now -- about Daehyun, his responsibilities, school, his future.

A little bubble of nausea forms in Youngjae’s gut and makes his head spin, and again Mark reaches out to him, concerned when he stumbles in his footing. “Okay,” Youngjae admits. “I’ll sit out for a moment.”

.

He’s sore the next day at school, and the next, and the next. Sore and tired and a little bit cranky, and Daehyun sits down next to him in homeroom and shoves his phone in Youngjae’s face.

“Do you know this person?”

Youngjae looks at the screen. The photo has captured the sun just before it dips below the horizon, the sky a palette of pinks and purples, the building in the forefront cast into shadow. The building, though, is not the main focus; the woman crouching on the fire escape to the side of the building is.

Daehyun swipes his thumb across the screen and the photo shifts. Now, the woman is standing. Her get-up is a black body suit molded to her muscled curves, and she seems to be wearing a mask over her eyes. Youngjae is immediately reminded of Black Widow, the famed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Instead of red locks, though, this woman’s hair is inky black and left to flow free and tumble down her shoulders and upper back.

Another swipe and the photo shifts again. She’s in the air, body curled as she somersaults off the fire escape, five stories up from the ground. Another swipe; she’s still in the air, but closer to the pavement. Another swipe; she’s landed gracefully on the ground in a crouch, completely uninjured.

“No,” Youngjae hisses, irritable. “And can you not do this in public?”

“Do what?” Daehyun asks, blinking innocently. He puts his phone away.

“Call attention to the fact that I’m--” Youngjae’s voice drops to a low whisper “-- _Spider-Man_.”

Daehyun’s eyes nearly roll back into his head. “Please,” he says, “no one is paying attention to us. Anyway, I call her Black Cat. I think she was robbing that apartment? Or maybe stopping a robbery from happening? I can’t decide--”

Youngjae looks around, and indeed no one is paying attention to them, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be careful. Daehyun is still talking when Youngjae notices a spot of dark red on Daehyun’s bottom lip.

“What happened to your face?”

Youngjae almost reaches out, almost tilts Daehyun’s chin towards him with his fingers. Instead, he points to his own lips, eyes wide, suddenly very awake. There’s a cut, small but fresh, and dark red.

Daehyun licks his lips, eyes flickering down to Youngjae’s and then back up. “Oh, this? Nothing. I was...out. Taking pictures. I, ah, ran into a street sign.”

“You _ran into a street sign_ ,” Youngjae repeats, incredulous.

“Yes! I swear. I almost broke my camera, even. Does it look that bad?” He worries at it, pressing his finger to the cut and checking to see if it’s still bleeding. “Oh, fuck. Ms. Hana’s going to want to talk about this.”

Ms. Hana is the school social worker for the upperclassmen.

Youngjae stares as Daehyun keeps dabbing at his lip. “You see Ms. Hana?”

“Yeah.”

“I...didn’t know. When did you start seeing her?”

Daehyun shrugs, shoulders curling up. He looks down at the desk and taps his fingers there. “I didn’t tell you. Um, when I got out of the hospital. I mean, all the teachers know the real reason I was in there -- It’s part of the plan.” He frowns. “She’s nice enough.”

He shifts in his seat.

Youngjae, busy with training and with understanding his powers and with not failing out of school, had almost forgotten how Daehyun had landed in the hospital in the first place. Daehyun seems so...okay, so _himself_ , and Youngjae takes a moment to remember: he’s been kicked out of his own home, living with his aunt and cousin; his mother never leaves the house; his step-father is a beast of a man who has made his life hell since the moment they moved in. And then on top of that, Daehyun’s been attacked _twice_ by Cobra, thrown from bridges and shot at and made to leap from tall buildings.

And Youngjae worries about whether or not Daehyun’s _interested_ in him.

“Is that weird?” Daehyun asks in a tiny voice. “That I need to see her?”

Youngjae comes back to the present, realizing how long he’s been silent, thinking. “No,” he says. “No, of course not. Sorry. I just spaced out. I just -- you’ve been through a lot,” he finishes lamely.

He does reach out this time and take one of Daehyun’s hands from where his fingers are tapping against his desk, holding it in his his, and Daehyun stills.

“You, too,” Daehyun says.

The bell rings, and he doesn’t let go.

.

Youngjae texts Himchan during lunch. He knows it must be chaotic at home for him, his father’s labs essentially stripped of their autonomy overnight by S.H.I.E.L.D without notice, but it’s still unusual for him to miss so much school.

He feels guilt for that, for being bitten, for putting TS Towers on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar.

But if not him, the thief would have gotten the spider bite, instead, and Youngjae likes to think that S.H.I.E.L.D would have swooped in all the same.

 _Are you okay?_ he sends to Himchan.

He doesn’t get an immediate response.

At the end of the day he checks his phone again as Daehyun packs his books into his backpack by his locker.

 _Busy_ , Himchan has sent. _:(_

“All set?” Daehyun asks him.

They see Junhong racing toward them from the end of the hall, his skateboard under his arm and a huge smile on his face. The halls are emptying. Junhong throws his skateboard down and steps onto it, swerving around other students and gliding to a stop in front of the older two.

Youngjae looks down at his phone as it buzzes again.

Himchan sends, _sorry i’ll explain later._

He puts his phone away. Outside, the light of the afternoon is starting to warm the snow piled up on the sidewalks and lawns.

“Yeah,” Youngjae says.

.


	2. Chapter 2

Mark and Jackson are reassigned to a team in Los Angeles. The team consists of a young man who can read people’s minds, a shapeshifter, and the teleporter and firestarter. “We’ll Skype,” Jackson promises Youngjae on the last day they will share a training schedule. “It’s just California.”

“I mean, or I can teleport over,” Mark says, shrugging. “Jaebum and Jinyoungie have been in the program as long as we have. We trained with them before coming here, and I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”

“Maybe by the time they do, you’ll be rocking the Spider-Man onesie for real, right? Dude,” Jackson jeers with a smile when Youngjae is silent, “come on, say something. Aren’t you sad? Won’t you miss us?”

He will. They all go out for pizza that evening and ignore how Junhong and Jackson are suspiciously hiding the sheen in their eyes.

This leaves Youngjae with Junhong in the big echoing training rooms of Stark Tower, and he realizes two things simultaneously: first, that it was nice to hang out with a regular group of friends like a normal teenager struggling through high school life without needing to hide a huge part of himself; and second, that he’s never seen what it is that Junhong can _do_.

Junhong shows him one afternoon after gaining permission from the Professor (whom Youngjae has still never seen, so he imagines a wizened old man with whiskers in his ears and a foreign accent on his tongue), bringing him into a room Youngjae’s never been invited into before in one of the top floors. “It’s not anything performance-worthy,” Junhong says, guiding Youngjae into a room full of machinery that seems to belong in an underground intelligence lab. “It’s not really, like, good for offense. So I train a lot with the Professor -- well, he calls it training, but I call it research.”

Junhong blinks and the room whirs to life around them both, screens flickering on as script that Youngjae can’t decipher flickers across them in brilliant green. The largest screen is actually a square surface on the floor that becomes a holographic field in the center of the room, and Youngjae jumps back on reflex when shapes and numbers begin to trail from the ceiling to the floor between them. His jaw hangs loose as Junhong seems to move the information being presented with his body.

“Here,” Junhong says, opening his arms to zoom into a file. “I just hacked into the school database -- it’s super easy to get into. I can pull up your grades. Looks like--”

Junhong pauses, clapping his hands shut as the file containing Youngjae’s grades disintegrates. “Ah, never mind. Looks like you’re not doing too well.”

“It’s hard being a vigilante,” Youngjae whispers, too awed to feel offended or defensive. “So you’re, what, a genius hacker?”

“Well,” Junhong says, pausing. He dances with his hands and the holographic field changes with each movement, bringing into the center various images and videos. “It’s more than that. I’m a technopath, so hacking comes easy to me. It’s like, the way you learn to read a map? I can do that with any piece of technology and then also control it.”

“That is so _cool_ ,” Youngjae says, starstruck for the first time. Mark and Jackson’s powers had been interesting, but they were pretty standard superhero stuff. Junhong’s power seems limitless. “Who else knows about it?”

“Including The Professor and Hyosung? Just you. They want to keep it really hush hush. Even Jackson and Mark -- they only knew I was good with electronics.”

“I get that,” Youngjae says. Junhong blinks and the room dies down again, the lights flickering above them before stabilizing. “But aren’t you -- I don’t know, like, Mark and Jackson get to go out and fight crime. Being a secret like this, being in a room like this, do you feel like a superhero?”

“No,” Junhong replies readily. They walk out of the room again and Youngjae tries not to look at the complicated locking system put in place for the door. “I’m just a kid. I’m not really cut out for that vigilante stuff, anyway. I think it’s way cooler being behind the scenes like this, and one day I’ll probably be an official agent, supporting covert ops. But, like, I like to think these powers weren’t just a chance, you know? If I can help people, shouldn’t I? It’s like if you’re a doctor and someone is hurt or in need of medical assistance, you have to announce you’re there and try to help.”

Youngjae thinks of Daehyun -- that night with his stepfather in their backyard, Daehyun sleeping in Youngjae’s bed after; calling Hyosung. Hadn’t he been driven by the same thought?

“Doing good for the sake of it,” Youngjae says to Junhong, who lowers his head sheepishly. “Who would have thought you were so altruistic?”

Youngjae spends the afternoon dodging discs Junhong hurls at him through a machine that looks like a modified tennis-ball shooter, wondering if he spoke too soon.

.

Himchan doesn’t show up at school for the next three days. The empty seat next to Youngjae during homeroom is glaringly obvious to him, and he can’t shake the feeling now that something is wrong. All throughout the school day it nags at him, sharpening his focus in strange ways. He hears an argument between a taxi driver and a pedestrian happening at least ten blocks away like he’s there at the scene. He smells a fellow classmate’s dinner from last night in his hair. He plucks a fly out of the air between his fingers, its thin gossamer wings delicate in his hold, and lets it go when he thinks he hears it scream.

“I’m going to go over to Himchan’s after school today,” Youngjae tells Daehyun between classes at the other’s locker. Daehyun pauses in switching out his books, frowning.

“Youngjae,” he begins cautiously, “are you okay?”

To be quite honest, Youngjae’s feeling peaky, the miserable sort of ache that takes over your body before a fever manifesting. It’s the feeling he can’t shake, and it has to do with Himchan’s absence. He catches himself in the little mirror inside Daehyun’s locker and gasps -- his eyes are dark and his skin paler than usual. “I’m okay,” he says anyway. “I’m just worried about Himchan. He’s been out for a while, and he’s not answering his phone anymore.”

Daehyun nods slowly, resuming switching out his books. “I’m worried about him, too.”

“Want to come with me to check up on him?”

“Sure, but I told Yongguk I wanted to talk to him after school today. It shouldn’t take too long. Can you meet me by the newspaper office?”

The warning bell rings, shrill and loud and then suddenly deep and throbbing like a hammer in his ears, and his head swims. It feels like the first day after he’d gotten his powers, like he’d been thrown into a pool of strange smells and weird visions, disoriented and out of control. A girl walks by and her perfume makes Youngjae gag.

Daehyun reaches forward, his fingers light over Youngjae’s wrist, tapping uncertainly before he wraps his hand around him. “Youngjae?”

The world shrinks down to the feathery touch of Daehyun’s skin and rights itself in his mind. Youngjae breathes, shakes his head to clear out the cobwebs, and blinks, meeting Daehyun’s wide eyes. “That was weird.”

“Are you okay?” Daehyun asks again. “Do spiders get sick?”

“Ha ha,” Youngjae laughs without humor, though the sudden spell frightened him. What did it mean? “I’m fine. Just got dizzy for a second. I’ll meet you after school at the office.”

Daehyun releases his hold to close his locker, and Youngjae braces himself for the screech of metal against metal, only it never comes. It just sounds like a normal locker door being closed. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“I’ll see you later, then,” Daehyun says, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to lean over, close and intimate, but in the end he simply touches his fingers to Youngjae’s wrist again, a pleasant little smile on his face, and walks away.

.

The door to the office that the school newspaper staff have claimed is open when Youngjae rounds the corner, and the conversation from the room trickles easily to him without effort, Daehyun and Yongguk’s voices amplified by his sensitivity to noise. He slows his steps, debating if he should consciously try _not_ to eavesdrop, when Yongguk’s low rumble cuts Daehyun’s rambling short.

“I know Spider-Man is important to you, Daehyun, and that you’re really interested in this, but doesn’t it all feel a bit tabloid-ish to you?”

A lull in the conversation has Youngjae pausing in his steps; he can sense the way Daehyun would be standing, head bowed like he is being scolded, fists clenched against his sides.

“I just think,” Daehyun starts carefully, “that it’s important for people to see -- to see that there are _good_ people out there.”

“We can do articles on the _good_ people who aren’t wearing masks,” Yongguk says. “They’re important, too.”

“It’s not the same--”

And that’s when Youngjae knocks on the door frame, peering sheepishly around it to see Yongguk sitting behind a desk in the dim light of the small office, Daehyun standing before him. They both glance at him, and he hears Yongguk’s teeth grind together.

“Youngjae,” Daehyun greets, the tension melting from his shoulders in an instant. He smiles and adjusts his back pack to bring it around to his front, unzipping and digging into its contents, looking for something. “I’ll just be another moment,” he says.

Yongguk gives Youngjae a meaningful look that he can’t decipher, but his attention is drawn away from him again when Daehyun says, addressing Yongguk, “Damn, I left the folder in my locker. I need to go get it. But, fine, maybe not a regular column, but just give me more ownership over the blog. It’s turning into more of a photo journal, anyway.”

The senior sighs, putting two fingers to his temples and massaging them. “Fine,” he says.

Daehyun zips his back pack up again quickly, and takes a few quick steps to the door. “Yes! Great! Okay, let me go get the photos. Youngjae, wait here. I’ll be right back.”

And then he’s halfway down the hall. Youngjae watches his hurried sprint to his locker, feeling a dopey smile form on his own face.

“He looks like he’s doing better,” Yongguk says suddenly, and Youngjae’s focus snaps back to him. Yongguk frowns. Youngjae remembers then how just a couple of months ago, Yongguk and Daehyun had been dating, and he's still iffy on the details of their break-up. He wonders if the look Yongguk had given him before was jealousy.

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Youngjae asks him, suspicious.

Yongguk doesn’t answer right away, and the silence stretches between them as they regard each other. Finally, Yongguk says, “He’s been putting a lot of energy into this superhero stuff. Ever since Cobra attacked the school and Spider-Man saved him...He’s out all the time taking pictures.”

“That’s good, right?” Youngjae says. “For the blog, for the paper. More material.”

Yongguk’s brow dips as he begins to fiddle with one of the pens on his desk, forming his thoughts slowly. “I don’t know,” he says. “Honestly, I’m a little worried. It feels like he’s using all this superhero stuff so he doesn’t have to think about...other things.” Another significant look that shoots needles through Youngjae’s feet, holding him in place. “Plus, it could be dangerous.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where there are heroes there are villains, right? I can’t keep him from doing something he loves--”

Yongguk stops speaking when Daehyun returns, appearing behind Youngjae and huffing a bit from the run. He strides forward holding out a manila folder to Yongguk, plopping it onto his desk triumphantly. “Black Cat,” Daehyun announces. “It’ll catch on.”

Only then does Daehyun glance behind himself at Youngjae and seem to notice the strange tension in the air. He looks between the two boys and asks hesitantly, “Um, is everything okay?”

“We were just talking about Harding,” Yongguk lies readily, referring to one of their history teachers. “I had him last year, so I was offering a bit of advice.”

“Yeah,” Youngjae says. “Harding.”

If Daehyun catches the lie he doesn’t comment on it, smiling instead. “I’m glad I don’t have him,” he says, starting to lead Youngjae out the door. “C’mon, let’s go. Bye, Yongguk!”

Youngjae catches the frown twisting across Yongguk’s face as they leave, their brief conversation ringing in his ears.

.

Himchan lives in a very nice building close to the city with a doorman who announces all arrivals. Youngjae has come often enough that the doorman lets them in without a fuss, though he does give Daehyun a brief, wary glance. Daehyun, for his part, tries his best not to gape, but Youngjae watches him take in the grandeur of the building, the high ceilings and the fancy borders, the immaculate white floors and shiny mirrors. They walk slowly through the lobby to the elevator, which opens with a soft ping.

Himchan’s family takes up the ninth floor of the building, and Daehyun edges closer to Youngjae inside the small elevator. “There’s one apartment on the _whole_ ninth floor?” he asks for the third time.

“Yup,” Youngjae says. “Pretty impressive, right?”

Daehyun leans back against the wall, silent. Youngjae understands. The first time Himchan invited him over, he’d felt like a tiny insignificant beetle in a huge forest.

When they reach the ninth floor, the elevator pings again, and opens its doors to reveal a small receiving room with a coat rack.

“If they have parties,” Youngjae explains, “this is like coat check.”

“That’s insane,” Daehyun mumbles, like he’s afraid to raise his voice.

Youngjae leads them out, crossing the room quickly to the front door leading into the apartment. To his surprise, the door creaks open when he pushes on it, unlocked and left slightly ajar.

“Hm,” Youngjae says, before stepping in.

“Are we breaking in!” Daehyun bursts out nervously. “Only, I don’t want to get arrested or anything like that.”

“We’ll just see if he’s in. If he’s not, we’ll leave. If he is, I’m gonna tell him what an asshole he is for making me -- us -- worry.”

Daehyun pauses in the long hallway leading into the Kims' living room, scanning the wall of books lining it. “This is amazing,” he says. Youngjae takes him by the elbow, passing the kitchen, the hallway, and the living room, and then they are standing in front of Himchan’s closed bedroom door.

“They’ve got a piano,” Daehyun whispers. “And a fireplace. But no chimney? Where does that door go?”

“Himchan,” Youngjae calls, knocking on the door. “Are you in there? It’s Youngjae.”

No response. He waits a moment before trying again. Daehyun wanders off to peer closer at the baby grand piano, and then he’s bringing his camera out of his back pack and taking pictures.

“Himchan, if you’re in there, I’m opening the door.”

Youngjae fits his hand over the knob, counts to three, and when he doesn’t feel any sort of tingle of danger in his spine, turns it and pushes. The door creaks open. The bedroom is empty, but the sheets are mussed and there are clothes on the floor. He walks in to investigate, but nothing seems out of place. The windows are slightly open to allow a breeze even though it’s chilly outside. There’s a mug of coffee on Himchan’s desk, still warm, sitting on top of a pile of papers.

Youngjae shivers. A discordant sound suddenly hangs in the air, like something has been thrown across the piano keys, followed by a yelp of surprise.

Daehyun.

He rushes out of the bedroom and back into the living room to see Himchan emerging out of the doorway behind the piano, a dark glower on his face. “What are you doing here?” he growls.

Daehyun is fumbling with his camera, trying to put it back into his bag, but Youngjae can tell even from this distance that his hands are shaking, that he’s rendered immobile by the hummingbird flutter of his heart.

“Himchan,” Youngjae calls again, to distract him.

“You, too?” Himchan says angrily. “What is this?”

“We were worried about you,” Youngjae says, putting his hands in front of him in a show of peace and walking forward. “We wanted to make sure you were okay.” Even as he says this, he knows Himchan is not. There are dark circles under his eyes, which are red and irritated, and his skin seems clammy and pale. He wonders when was the last time Himchan found sleep.

“So you _break into my apartment?_ ”

“The door was open--”

“So _what_?”

“We’ll leave, okay?” Youngjae says hurriedly, because Daehyun’s breathing is starting to take on a worrying, high-pitched quality. He makes a wide circle around Himchan as he reaches for Daehyun, pulling him to his side. “I’m sorry. We just wanted to see you were okay. But we’ll get out of here.”

“You were _snooping_ ,” Himchan hisses.

“N-no,” Daehyun manages, but that’s all he seems to be able to say.

“We’re leaving,” Youngjae says again, trying to be even and calm, because his friend doesn’t seem reasonable at the moment. “We’ll just leave.”

Himchan stands there, shoulders rising and falling with every breath. His hair is in complete disarray. He’s still in his pajamas. Finally, he stalks back through the doorway without a word, the door slamming behind him. Daehyun flinches, but neither move immediately, stunned by what they just saw, until Daehyun breaks the silence with squeaky inhale of his breath.

“I need,” he gasps, “I need to sit down. Not here. Not here, not here, not here.”

Youngjae pulls him as quickly and gently as he can to the front door. The elevator takes an agonizing minute to reach them, and then once they are inside, Daehyun curls up against Youngjae and whimpers. His heart hammers inside of his chest, unbelievably loud. “We’ll get outside,” Youngjae says encouragingly. “There’s a cafe across the street--”

The elevator stops and the doors open and Daehyun bolts, slamming into the heavy front doors before the doorman can open them and forcing his way outside. Youngjae follows at his heels, panicked, afraid he’ll lose him, but Daehyun just turns the corner to find an empty stairwell. When Youngjae reaches him, he’s already sitting on the concrete steps, head between his knees.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles miserably. “Don’t touch me.”

Youngjae doesn’t. He takes a seat a few steps down from him, though, and waits with him. He can hear how Daehyun’s heart begins to slow with every breath, the painful process of returning to normal. When the beat matches his own, he asks, “What happened?”

Daehyun’s voice is muffled from his position, but Youngjae can still make out the words. “The piano was cool, so I started taking pictures of it. Then I wandered into that room Himchan was in. Only I didn’t know he was in there. It was -- Youngjae, you should have seen that room. There are boards up everywhere. It’s full of -- formulas and stuff. Newspaper clippings. Maps. I took a couple of pictures before I got caught. Himchan must have been napping, or something, because suddenly he was there, in front of me. He pushed me out.”

Why hadn’t Youngjae heard that or sensed it? He frowns, shifting up to sit on the same step when Daehyun finally lifts his face. “And then he pushed you into the piano,” Youngjae says, scowling at the thought. It wasn’t like Himchan to be violent, and he hated that Daehyun had experienced it.

“The pictures,” Daehyun continues, sitting up and rummaging around for his camera. He brings it out and turns the image viewer on for Youngjae. “Look at the newspaper clippings, Youngjae.”

The photos show a wall covered in articles and formulas and papers. As Daehyun scrolls through the images he managed to capture, Youngjae notices a pattern. “They’re all of Spider-Man and Cobra.”

“The formulas and maps,” Daehyun says, “and the clippings -- I think -- Youngjae, now I’m _really_ worried about him.”

“What do you think he’s looking for?” Youngjae asks.

Daehyun puts the camera away. Recovered from his attack, Youngjae imagines he must still be feeling the after effects, and he settles back when Daehyun places his head on his shoulder, hair tickling under Youngjae’s chin.

“Whatever it is,” Daehyun says solemnly, “it can’t be good for you.”

.


	3. Chapter 3

The week closes out and Himchan does not return. Youngjae texts him, not expecting any responses, and walks home with Daehyun when he is able to. His powers come in and out, and he has a hypothesis that it has something to do with the rain, but doesn’t have time to test it before a shiver runs down his spine after the last bell and he hears police sirens blaring in the distance. At least, he knows they're supposed to be somewhere 'in the distance,' but to Youngjae they sound like they're going off right by his ears.

Daehyun stands next to him at his locker with his brows drawn down over his eyes, his hands warm over Youngjae’s shoulders, and it isn’t until Youngjae blinks that he realizes he’s got his hands up over his ears and he’s gritting his teeth against a noise that no one else can hear.

 _Are you okay?_ Daehyun is saying, but Youngjae’s ears are only picking up vibrations at this close distance, his powers out of balance and bringing his senses out far, way past the perimeter of the school.

“I have to go,” Youngjae says suddenly, realizing what that shiver was. He throws his backpack over his shoulders and takes Daehyun’s hands, squeezing once to reassure him. “I’m fine, I just -- have to go. There’s something -- Sorry.”

He’s already skipping down the hall, narrowly avoiding colliding with the group of football players who have congregated by the lockers. He spins out of their reach when one makes a grab for him, and catches Daehyun staring after him with a cross look on his face.

He’ll understand.

His suit itches under his regular clothes. It’s taken some time getting used to its tight confines, but the material is breathable and durable, and now he’s glad he started wearing it. He started carrying around his mask, too, stuffed in an old beanie buried at the bottom of his backpack.

Once he’s a couple of blocks from the school, he ducks into an alley and changes, pulling the mask over his face and stashing his bag with his civilian clothes behind a couple of abandoned crates.

Then, he focuses on the sirens, and heads for the fray.

.

Unfortunately, the fray doesn’t wait for him. It’s obvious something went down. There’s police tape across the broken windows and front door of the pharmacy, and debris scattered from what looks like an explosion from the inside. Pieces of glass and brick litter the sidewalk and street just before the pharmacy. Something appears to be smoking behind one of the windows.

He can’t tell if his senses are so off that he felt the shiver and heard the sirens long after the events occurred, and he frowns beneath his mask.

A figure moves within the wreckage, and Youngjae stiffens, crouching and stalking forward, low to the ground. He’s suspicious. Who would still be lingering here, long after the police have left the scene for the day?

Inside, scorch marks blacken the floor and walls; there’s a hole in the ceiling where the wiring is falling through. Shelves upon shelves of medicine and other goods have fallen like dominoes, and there’s something acrid and sour about the air. Youngjae’s spine tingles again, because he knows Cobra was here.

“You’re not as quiet as you think you are, Spidey.”

Youngjae spins, only to be met by a female figure holding a sleek, small gun to his face. He puts his hands up. Youngjae can move quickly, but he’s not sure if he can move so quickly to avoid a bullet. Suddenly, he wishes Mark were here.

“You’re just a boy,” the woman says, lowering the gun, “in a costume. What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Youngjae spits back maturely, quickly putting his hands down. The woman is familiar -- tall and clad in a bodysuit that looks made to resist gunfire, with inky black hair that falls in waves over her shoulders. Her mask is tapered outward from the eyes, giving her a feline aura. “Black Cat!” he says, surprising himself.

The woman rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Is that what they’re calling me these days? I swear, I just put on a different suit and no one recognizes me anymore--”

“You’re Black Cat,” Youngjae says, following her as she turns and examines a bottle of pills at her feet before scooping it and a few other bottles into a sack around her waist. “I have a friend who’s interested in you! He takes your pictures for the school paper.” He’s not sure why he’s so excited. Maybe Daehyun is rubbing off on him. Or maybe he’s just thinking about how excited Daehyun would be to meet her, this super-something who’s been the object of his camera lens for the past few weeks.

“Oh honey,” she says, “I don’t have time for fanboys. Are the pictures good, though?” She scoops a few more things into her sack, then takes a couple of agile steps to hop over the counter and land lightly on her feet before the register.

“He’s not a fanboy,” Youngjae says, staying with her. She bangs the register a few times as he speaks. “He just wants to know--” He winces at a particularly loud _bang!_ and trails off at the accompanying _ding!_ of the register opening. Black Cat makes a happy little noise. “--if you’re...a hero...or a...villain…”

Black Cat takes the entire tray of cash from the register and dumps the contents into her sack. Youngjae remains silent, watching her, wondering if he should stop her. “Kid,” she says, putting the tray back in its place, “it’s not so black and white. This is pay for earlier when I stopped that -- Snake Eyes guy from destroying the whole neighborhood. I’m a free agent, you know? It doesn’t pay to be a superhero.”

“You can’t take that,” Youngjae says weakly, pointing at her sack full of pharmaceutical goodies.

“What, you gonna stop me?”

Youngjae thinks about it, but Black Cat hadn’t shot him earlier, and he wants to live to be able to tell Daehyun about meeting her. He holds his hands up again, and Black Cat smirks.

“You’re cute,” she says as she’s walking out, and Youngjae lets her. “I can tell you want to do the right thing. You tell your friend I’ll give him some good shots this week, okay? That kid with the whiskers when he smiles, right?”

“How did you--?”

She makes an impossible jump to the third floor fire escape landing of the next building over, and already her voice is barely within a normal human’s earshot. “See you around, kid!” she calls over her shoulder.

Youngjae runs after her, throwing out his hand only to find his webbing trapped under the surface of his skin. He shakes his own wrists, frustrated. “Wait!” he shouts, “What about Cobra? What happened to him?”

But she’s gone.

He turns back to the pharmacy. Why had Cobra attacked a simple neighborhood drug store?

.

Hyosung does not have any answers for him, when he asks. “Cobra is not the priority right now,” she tells him, rubbing her temples. Training had been hard today. Youngjae had been unfocused, sluggish and preoccupied.

“How can he not be?” Youngjae asks incredulously. “He’s dangerous, and he could hurt a lot of people. And let’s not forget he seems to be after me?”

“He hasn’t attacked you directly after the school,” Hyosung says, clipped. “I can’t do much about it, Youngjae. He’s just not the priority right now. S.H.I.E.L.D is much bigger than New York City.”

He leaves early, without Junhong, and wonders how different things would be if he had never joined S.H.I.E.L.D.

.

On Monday is the first real thaw of spring after a long winter, but Youngjae is too bogged down in his own thoughts to enjoy it. During lunch, dozens of students wander outside for the period to brave the AstroTurf field and eat in the chilly sun, optimistic for better weather to come. Youngjae wanders, too, and ends up on the steps behind the gymnasium, unsure what brought him here.

That is, until he looks down and sees Daehyun sitting there on the steps, stiff with white-knuckled fingers wrapped around the straps of his backpack.

“Hi?” Youngjae says, wincing when Daehyun jumps and his eyes dart back to look for the intruder.

“Oh,” Daehyun says, breathing out, “Youngjae.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Needed space,” Daehyun mumbles, watching Youngjae move to sit beside him.

“Me, too,” Youngjae says.

They sit together in comfortable silence, the breeze carrying sounds from the field up to them occasionally. Youngjae waits for Daehyun to tell him what he’s thinking about, wanting very much to reach over to take one of his hands and brush his thumb over his palm to make him relax. Besides, at this point he would welcome any relief from his constant doubt that he’s doing the right thing, or even capable of doing the right thing -- that he’s cut out to be a hero.

“I keep thinking about when I have to go home,” Daehyun confesses. “I’m scared. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking during Chemistry. I don’t want to go back.”

He turns as he speaks the last sentence, his voice breaking. He doesn’t cry -- Youngjae thinks maybe there’s a point at which a person can be done with crying, for a while, if everything is too much -- so Youngjae scoots in closer and lets him lean against him. He takes one of Daehyun’s hands from the strap and holds it between two warm palms, hoping the tremors will soon cease.

Daehyun asks, watching their hands, “Do you think Spider-Man would understand why I’m a mess and a coward?”

“You’re not a mess,” Youngjae says gently. “And you’re not a coward. You’re being brave and it’s okay to be scared.”

Daehyun doesn’t respond, but his eyes lose their desperate, manic glow, and his fingers tighten around Youngjae’s hand instead.

“Spider-Man saw Black Cat,” Youngjae tells him, hoping to distract Daehyun from his thoughts.

It works. Daehyun’s whole posture unfolds, and his eyes brighten with interest. “What? When? What is she like?”

Youngjae grins, settling back against the steps. Daehyun presses himself up against his side, warm and solid. “Last week. There was trouble at a pharmacy nearby. Spider-Man saw her there. Apparently she had stopped Cobra from taking out the whole neighborhood. There should be an article about it.”

“I read it,” Daehyun says with a wide smile. “But I didn’t think you -- I mean Spider-Man you, I mean -- I didn’t think _you met her_.” His voice drops down into a whisper even though there is no one around them, and Youngjae’s breath catches in his throat, finding it too endearing.

“She was pretty cool,” Youngjae admits. “But--” He wonders if he should tell Daehyun the rest of it, even knowing how much it will disappoint him. In that small moment, he decides Daehyun needs to hear it. “--but then she was stealing from the pharmacy. The article probably didn’t cover that.”

He can feel the fervor die in his friend, and Youngjae closes his eyes against the disappointment he knows he’ll find in Daehyun’s. “I’m sorry,” he continues, letting Daehyun pull away. “But I don’t think she’s a hero, Daehyun. She was stealing. Maybe hero isn’t the right word, anyway. Maybe heroes don’t exist.”

“You’re wrong,” Daehyun says in a small, determined voice. He rolls his shoulders back and adjusts the straps on his bag before standing. The bell rings to signal the end of the period. “They do exist. I know it.”

.


	4. Chapter 4

The doorman lets Youngjae into Himchan’s building with a wink and a salute. “How you been?” he greets.

Youngjae mumbles something in the affirmative and strolls past with a skip in his heartbeat he’s sure the other man can hear, but the doorman only keeps smiling as Youngjae continues right into the elevator, breathing out a sigh of relief when the doors slide shut.

He hasn’t been able to get Himchan’s bloodshot eyes out of his head, the shock of seeing his friend in such a state rattling him not only because he is sincerely worried about him but also because there was something _off_ about it all, something that keeps him up at night hearing sirens across the river in New Jersey. Since S.H.I.E.L.D won’t help him find any leads on Cobra, Youngjae has directed his energies elsewhere. He called and texted Himchan a couple of times more, except this time he expected the silence from him, and now his investigative curiosity has gotten the best of him.

If Himchan is in his home, then Youngjae will talk to him, reason with him, ask him what’s wrong and try to help him fix it. He'll tell him to come back to school. If he’s not home, then those pictures that Daehyun took in the room behind the piano are of definite further interest.

He tells himself he is not about to do something illegal. He’d come over a couple of days ago with Daehyun for the same purpose of checking up on Himchan, worried about his friend, but somehow this time the feeling is different. He’s seen how unbalanced Himchan seemed, and now he is himself is strangely jittery, like he's considering breaking into a stranger’s apartment.

The elevator stops and the doors open, revealing the empty landing. Youngjae steps out and a shiver snakes down his spine. The front door, when he approaches it, is unlocked again.

The hinges creak loudly when Youngjae pushes the door, and his eyes immediately start to water at a pungent smell in the air. He brings his shirt up over his face to cover his nose, certain that if he didn’t have super powers he wouldn’t be able to smell the rot, but then he finds himself in the kitchen where the refrigerator has been ransacked, door left open and its contents slowly decaying. Gagging slightly, Youngjae closes it and steps around precariously to reach the window in the kitchen, hoisting it open to let out the smell. 

Then he goes into the hallway, into the living room, eyes widening at the disarray. Books have been discarded onto the floor, on the tables, on the cushions of the seats, their spines bent back and their pages on display. A quick glance over them tells Youngjae they are all scientific in nature, filled with complicated chemical formulas his measly high school education can’t even begin to cover.

“Himchan?” Youngjae says cautiously, though his senses conclude that no one else is in the apartment. “Hello? Mr. Kim?”

No answer. Youngjae kneels down to skim over the page of a book near him, which reads more like a Greek mythology with words like _chimera_ and _hybridoma_ than scientific text.

He wades through the books to Himchan’s room next, but only finds it to be an extension of the mess in the living room, littered with foul cups of half-drunk coffee. Some of the cups are fresher than the others. On Himchan's table is a line of them, and through them Youngjae can measure the passage of time. The cup on the very left has days-old brown sludge in the bottom, while the cup on the very right smells relatively fresh, like it could only be a day old. 

If he remembers Himchan's manic stare, he can easily imagine his friend pouring over the books until the sun rises, forgetting to eat or sleep or even to shut the refrigerator door. "Oh, Himchan," Youngjae says to himself as he looks around the room, but he finds no more clues of his friend's whereabouts.

He leaves the bedroom.

Next, he’ll check the room behind the piano. 

Steeling himself with a deep breath, he faces the door and opens it.

.

A couple of hours later, he calls Junhong, who answers on the second ring with his words slurring together and ending with a questioning tone.

“It’s Youngjae,” Youngjae says helpfully, because it’s nearing two in the morning and he’s certain Junhong had been sleeping. Youngjae had not been sleeping. Youngjae had been going over the papers and photos and clippings he’d discovered in Himchan’s room behind the piano until all the words and images were so mixed up together that they began to make sense.

“What? What’s happening?” Junhong’s level of alertness immediately spikes, and Youngjae quickly apologizes.

“Nothing. Or, I hope it’s nothing. I just -- listen, can you help me get into TS Tower?”

“Um,” Junhong says. “No.”

“The alternative is that I try on my own, get caught, expose S.H.I.E.L.D to the world, and let loose the secrets of this deep, dark organization.”

“Yeah…” Junhong says. “Didn’t that already happen?”

“Junhong!” Youngjae nearly shouts into the phone, growing frustrated. “Don’t you want to be an agent? Backing up operatives? Helping superheroes get their jobs done? Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Say more,” Junhong demands, yawning.

“Okay.” Youngjae runs his fingers over the smooth papers he’d taken from Himchan’s apartment and tells Junhong what he knows and what he thinks he knows. How worried he was for Himchan, how he went to visit him with Daehyun a couple of days back. How manic he’d seemed. Youngjae had gone back to Himchan’s place, found it empty, and happened upon other materials. There were multiple copies of TS Tower’s blueprints, separated out by floors. Diagrams of the same chemical formula repeated over and over in Himchan’s chicken scratch scrawl on every new page. Himchan was looking for something, Youngjae concludes to Junhong, and he was going to TS Tower to find it.

“Well, if you had _started_ with that,” Junhong mutters, clearly annoyed, but sighing.

Youngjae feels his jaw clench. “Did you think I wanted to break into TS Tower for...myself?”

“Hey,” Junhong begins defensively, “I don’t know what you get up to at night. You never came out with us to patrol when Mark and Jackson were here, remember?”

Youngjae concedes, gritting his teeth and hoping he isn’t too late.

.


	5. Chapter 5

Youngjae doesn’t have the luxury of changing into his suit -- he’d left it in his locker in Stark Tower -- so he changes into the next best thing: a pair of black running leggings and a black hoodie. He grabs a face mask out of his underwear drawer, too, though the mask is dark blue with silver stars printed over the surface, a gift from Daehyun. He’ll put it on only if completely necessary.

Stuffing the mask into the pocket of his hoodie, Youngjae hovers in front of his bedroom window, his fingers suddenly stiff on the sill. He’s really going to break into TS Tower right now. It feels...different from the petty crime he’s interrupted before. More definitive. He thinks of Himchan and his bloodshot eyes and takes a deep breath before throwing the window open and climbing out into the night.

.

“I’m here,” Youngjae tells Junhong, phone pressed against his ear. The surrounding area is dark and still around the tower, a stark contrast to how Youngjae remembers it during the day. The police tape is gone, though the emptiness of the building ever since S.H.I.E.L.D absorbed it remains and chills him.

“Jeez,” Junhong huffs, his voice breaking into static with his breath. “I forgot how quickly you move when you’re being all spider-y. Okay, give me a second and I’ll interrupt security systems for you to get in.”

“I’m on the roof,” Youngjae explains.

“Of course you are.”

“The door is open.”

“Of course it -- wait, what?”

Youngjae jogs lightly over to the door, left ajar. There’s a pipe in the doorframe to keep it open, but no other signs of forced entry. “Himchan must have come through this way.”

“Through the _roof_?” Junhong questions.

Youngjae shrugs even though no one can see him. “Well, it’s open anyway. Can you take the cameras and stuff offline while I go in?”

“Sure, sure,” Junhong grumbles. “Be careful and all that. Just a second -- okay.”

“I won’t be able to keep you on speaker or anything, Junhong.”

Junhong sighs, and Youngjae feels a rush of affection for his friend. “I know. Just call me if you need me for anything else. The cameras are all showing a loop of the last four seconds until I change it. I’ll just be waiting by my phone, you know, all anxious and wondering if you’re alive.”

Youngjae nudges the door open and steps inside. The stairs seem like an endless spiral down into the belly of the building, lit only by the small red ‘exit’ signs on each landing.

Youngjae says, “Thank you, Junhong. And Himchan wouldn’t hurt me.”

Junhong doesn’t say anything to that.

.

The blueprints in Himchan’s apartment had all depicted diagrams of the labs clustered in the floors around the 40s, so that is where Youngjae starts his search. He’s not sure exactly what he will do if he finds Himchan -- Talk him down? Call the police? Drag him back home for a long, overdue nap?

Preferably, he thinks as he quickly drops dozens of floors by shooting webbing to the ceiling and jumping down the column of open space in the middle of the staircase, he’ll be able to drag Himchan home and make sense of him. To have Himchan see sense. Whatever chemicals Himchan is interested in finding at a place like TS can’t be good, especially since Himchan’s father --

Youngjae shakes his head and stops himself when he passes a landing with a large ‘44’ painted on the wall, swinging himself to the railing and flipping over it onto his feet. He wriggles the tension out of his shoulders and arms and pushes the door open slowly, careful in case it squeaks.

It doesn’t. The floor is quiet and empty, the corridor in front of him extending long and silent, lit dimly by a strange ambient blue light that seems to be coming from the floor. From the blueprints, he knows that the labs will be on his left, external to the offices situated towards the center of the building. The corridor he is in runs a full loop around all the offices. He goes to the first lab on his left, startling a little in surprise when the door sealing the lab shut slides open automatically. Junhong must have seen to that, as well.

A quick scan of the room doesn’t reveal anything nefarious. The lab equipment has been put away so the stainless steel benches are free of paraphernalia, the floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite wall clear and free of smudges. His senses don’t tingle. Satisfied, Youngjae checks another lab on the same floor, and another.

All clear.

He’s considering if he should go up or down a flight when he hears a distant, tiny crash, like someone coming down too hard on their foot, and his senses hone in on the noise automatically in the otherwise still night.

Up it is.

He goes up via the emergency exit, figuring the situation of the staircase gives him ample opportunity to escape, if suddenly ambushed for some reason.

Floor 45 is the exact same as Floor 44.

Well, almost the exact same. This time, the ambient light is green.

Emerging from the staircase slowly, Youngjae strains his ears to hear anything that hints the presence of another human being, but the air is still. Dead. Youngjae swallows past the lump forming in his throat and cautiously proceeds to investigate the first lab.

The door slides open with a figure behind it, about his height, with dark hair hidden under a beanie. Narrow shoulders, full lips. A beauty mark under his eye. Daehyun is wearing a hoodie also, and black sweats, his camera hanging heavy around his neck.

Daehyun opens his mouth: “Young--”

Youngjae’s hand moves of its own accord, quick as a flash of lightning, and then Daehyun is glaring at him behind a mouth sealed over with webbing.

“Sorry,” Youngjae whispers hastily, pushing Daehyun into the lab and letting the door slide shut behind them. He peels the webbing from Daehyun’s face carefully, sheepish and avoiding looking into Daehyun’s eyes full of annoyance and shock. "You surprised me."

“You shot spider-stuff at me,” Daehyun accuses when the webbing is gone, wagging his index finger at Youngjae. “I can’t believe you.”

“What the _hell_ are you doing here?” Youngjae hisses, thinking again of Himchan, of Himchan and Daehyun’s last interaction. Of Daehyun recovering from a panic attack on the stairs. “You can’t be here.”

“You shouldn’t be here, either,” Daehyun says. He looks down at their joined hands, and Youngjae blushes, wishing he’d worn the mask after all. With some difficulty, Youngjae lets go, but not before letting his fingers linger across Daehyun’s palm.

“I’m following a lead,” Youngjae admits, not willing to say more. “And it could be dangerous.”

“Well,” Daehyun says, puffing out his chest and pointing to his camera, “I’m following Black Cat. And you, I suppose, now that you’re here. Although you’re not in costume so maybe...I shouldn’t take your picture?”

Youngjae’s eyes widen. “Black Cat is here?”

Daehyun nods. “Came in through the roof.”

“And you?”

“The front door…”

This brings Youngjae up short. Daehyun must have gotten through the security system somehow, long before Junhong had interfered. “You,” he says, “are full of surprises.”

Daehyun has the decency to look abashed. “I just wanted to see what Black Cat was up to. There must be more to it, huh, if you’re here, too?”

At his peering gaze, Youngjae turns away. He’d tell Daehyun anything, but he isn’t ready to tell him the real reason he’s here. He’s not sure where this secrecy stems from. He’s about to tell Daehyun to find the front door again and go home when he hears another crash, the definite sound of glass breaking, and this time it’s louder.

Daehyun hears it, too, turning to Youngjae with glittering, hopeful eyes. "That's on this floor."

Youngjae bites out a curse when Daehyun leaps towards the lab door.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow. it's been over a year since i updated. so sorry for the wait and hiatus. thanks for your patience <3 is anyone still reading this? /o\


	6. Chapter 6

Once they leave the lab room, Youngjae ushers Daehyun straight across the hallway and into the office on the other side, shutting the door behind them both and ducking behind the black leather couch against the wall so that they can’t be seen through the frosted glass of the door and walls. The office is quiet and relatively small, no larger than a walk-in closet. 

“Hey!” Daehyun hisses, affronted, not for the first time tonight. He glares at Youngjae and tries to move around him, but Youngjae senses where he tries to go before he can so much as twitch, and stops him by moving in front of him each time. Daehyun abates when the frustration from the feints makes him coil up tight like a spring, and Youngjae reaches out to him.

Daehyun is full of this wonderful, bright fire, Youngjae thinks. And he is so afraid for it to be snuffed out.

“Stay here,” Youngjae whispers, his hands on Daehyun’s upper arms and just lightly bearing down on him, hoping to make his words stick. “Where it’s safe.”

Daehyun sniffs with offense, hands on his camera. “It’s safe with _you_ ,” he argues.

“I don’t really know what’s out there,” Youngjae says. “Daehyun, I really don’t want you to get hurt.” _Again_ , his mind supplies, and a rush of guilt swells up in his chest. They’re on the floor now, kneeling in front of each other, breathing syncing slowly. Youngjae isn't sure if he's slowing down to match Daehyun's breaths or if it's the other way around.

Finally, Daehyun gives and sits down, eyes never leaving Youngjae’s as his hands come up to take his friend's hands, holding them between his own, his fingers soft and warm. “Jae…”

Youngjae’s breath leaves him. In the next moment, his lips are on Daehyun’s, a tingle passing between their bodies, Daehyun’s gasp melting into a wonderful sigh. Youngjae’s toes curl in his shoes. He feels giddy in a way he hasn’t felt since the first time he saw Daehyun in middle school, fresh from the West coast, carrying with him the sun.

Youngjae ends the kiss reluctantly and pulls back as slowly as he dares, taking in the faraway gaze in Daehyun’s eyes, his perfectly pink lips. “Stay here until I come get you,” Youngjae says. “ _Please_.”

Daehyun’s voice, when he answers, is a flutter. “Fine. Okay.”

He squeezes Youngjae’s hands before letting go.

.

The sound of glass breaking is becoming more rhythmic, a crash every few seconds as Youngjae creeps towards the lab from where the disturbance is coming. He thinks he can hear muttering under the crashes, his hearing fading in and out as it has been doing for the past few weeks. When he’d shot Daehyun with the webbing, Youngjae realizes, he hadn’t been thinking and it was the first time in a while his powers had followed his command.

What will happen when he confronts Himchan, and Youngjae has no powers at his disposal? He supposes he really might have to talk his friend down, use his very human powers of persuasion. His stomach coils tight in apprehension as he approaches the open lab door.

Shards of glass litter the floor, twinkling in the silvery dark like teeth. One wall of the lab is covered in cabinets, and it is there, in the far corner, that Youngjae sees a dark figure examining the contents of the ransacked cabinets, tossing vials of labeled chemicals and solutions behind him when they aren’t what he’s looking for.

“Himchan,” Youngjae mutters under his breath, inching forward and finding cover behind a lab bench.

Himchan’s hair is a wild nest on top of his head. He’s still wearing a white collared shirt and dark pants -- the same outfit Youngjae had last seen him in -- though the clothing carries many more wrinkles. When Himchan turns, Youngjae has to stifle a gasp at his appearance. The dark circles under his eyes seem to be permanent smudges, and he’s so pale he looks past death.

Worry trumps apprehension, and Youngjae moves forward, his feet displacing the glass and causing the shards to ring against each other. He freezes when Himchan twitches towards him.

A moment passes with Youngjae’s breath held, but Himchan simply turns back around, examining more of the vials and muttering under his breath. “Not this…” Youngjae can hear him saying to himself. “Not this one…”

Youngjae exhales, and pain explodes across his shoulder. He instinctively rolls away from it, out from behind the lab bench, searching for the source of the blow.

Cobra stands not twenty paces from him, his suit dark and torn in some places, revealing mottled skin underneath. The device on his back is smoking slightly, as is the attachment around one of his wrists. The other, Youngjae notices, is missing.

Why hadn’t Youngjae sensed Cobra? His powers should have alerted him to the presence of the other, but he hadn’t noticed him at all. It’s then that the smell coming from Cobra hits Youngjae fully -- a rank odor that reminds Youngjae of the time he’d stumbled upon a dead cat on his way to school, decomposing, flies circling the carcass. He brings the sleeve of his hoodie up to his nose to breathe through it, stifling a gag.

“Ah,” Himchan says, looking over his shoulder and seeing Youngjae emerge from behind the bench. “Youngjae. Of course it’s you.”

The surprise of Himchan’s nonchalance can only still Youngjae for so long, because then Cobra is attacking, another shot ringing out from his weapon at his wrist, glowing bright and yellow and whizzing past Youngjae’s shoulder as he leaps away and crashes into the ground. Glass slices into his palms. He yelps, and Cobra moves again, inhumanly fast.

As Youngjae fends for himself, Cobra only seems to grow stronger with every punch he throws, a beserker on a rampage. The other’s chest is heaving and yet he doesn’t seem to be out of breath. They trade blows, Youngjae finally grateful for the training S.H.I.E.L.D provided him as he blocks and counters, aiming for what would have been weak spots on normal human beings: the solar plexus, the throat, the temple. But on Cobra, these attacks only seem to spur him on.

“Himchan!” Youngjae calls for his friend as he blocks a kick to his head and throws a heavy punch into Cobra’s unguarded gut. Hardly seems to phase him. “Himchan, stop this!”

Himchan only shrugs and turns back to the vials, tosses another over his shoulder. “Not this, nope.”

“Himchan!” Youngjae pleads again, trying to break through Cobra’s guard. He needs to talk to Himchan, get close and personal, get him to see sense. When he sees an opening, he rushes for it, but is knocked back onto his ass by Cobra.

The other levels his weapon at Youngjae’s face, and for the first time this evening Youngjae is truly afraid for his own life as he stares at the sickly yellow glow forming in the barrel of Cobra's gun.

He’d never seriously considered his own life like this, at what could be the end of it. It feels so insignificant to dwell on, but then he remembers Daehyun in the office, who is staying there until Youngjae comes to get him, who has lips like rose petals and eyes full of stars, and he moves.

The lab bench he had ducked behind collides into him with bone-jarring force, and he grits his teeth to stand the blow. Breathing hard, he scans the room for a weapon as Cobra readies his gun again.

Then Himchan says, “Dad. Come look at this.”

The next blow from Cobra’s gun leaves Youngjae’s head ringing, his vision spotting as he falls to the ground.

.


	7. Chapter 7

Sounds filters in first, then light, then shapes. Youngjae’s eyes open and his head flares in pain, but the shapes quickly form into objects, and with objects his consciousness finally returns. He blinks, the sounds he is hearing forming words.

“...this solution...could try…”

He blinks again and realizes he is still on the ground, sprawled onto his back. Cobra and Himchan must have left him here, deemed him an unlikely threat. How long had he been out? As he can still hear Himchan muttering to himself, he thinks it must have been not very long at all.

He turns his head, the pain flashing bright and hot behind his eyes, trying to place where they are in relation to him, but in his scan of the room he sees something that makes his heart jump up to his throat.

Daehyun, on the other side of the door, crouched in the hallway, his eyes like pinpoints of light, his knuckles white where they grip the door frame. He’s looking at Youngjae, and then he’s looking at what’s past Youngjae: Himchan and Cobra.

“This will work,” Himchan is saying. “It has to. Dad -- it has to.”

Youngjae realizes it at the same time Daehyun does, the sudden knowledge morphing his expression into one of shock, then sadness, then resignation.

Himchan had called Cobra his father.

Youngjae knew it in his gut, all along; he’d not been able to accept it, ever since that day on the bridge, the first time he’d fought Cobra, the first time he’d heard him hiss the words: _“You took what was mine.”_

He’d known. The spider that had bit him was Mr. Kim’s, after all.

Gritting his teeth to keep from groaning, Youngjae tries to move. His head is still splitting, but not as badly as it was when he first regained consciousness. _Get out of here,_ he mouths to Daehyun, hoping he’ll listen for once. Daehyun shakes his head. The muttering has stopped behind him. Glass crunches under heavy feet, nearing him, then past him. Himchan and Cobra walk around him like he’s nothing, just a bug they’ve already crushed, and Daehyun stands. Places both hands on either side of the door frame, blocking the exit with his body.

Youngjae’s ears ring as he stands, too slow. He can hear Daehyun shaking like a leaf, all his bones jostling together, his heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings.

So brave, his Daehyun.

Daehyun says, “Himchan, please don’t do this,” but his voice breaks and tremors, and Cobra laughs.

Takes aim.

“NO!” Youngjae bellows, just as Cobra fires. He shoots out his wrist and hopes and hopes and hopes for his powers to work, can’t watch if it doesn’t.

And Daehyun disappears from the doorway.

Youngjae breathes out a sigh of relief, just about laughs, when Daehyun says next to him, pulling webbing from his waist, “I think I almost pissed myself.”

His powers had worked and he’d snatched Daehyun out of the way in time, pulling him toward him in a blink of an eye. In the space where Daehyun was is a ring of blackened metal and glass.

“ _Please_ stay out of trouble,” Youngjae says, as Himchan and Cobra turn to see where their victim had gone, both of them meeting Youngjae’s steely glare.

.

Himchan tries to run.

Youngjae blasts webbing at his ankles, but the threads are weak and he knows they won’t hold even as they trip Himchan and bring him to the slick floor. Daehyun backs behind another lab bench as Cobra barrels toward them, and Youngjae stands his ground.

Just as before, hand-to-hand with Cobra keeps Youngjae on his toes. It’s almost impossible for him to keep up _and_ keep an eye on Himchan and Daehyun, but he manages. Just barely.

When Himchan breaks free of the webbing and stands to run, Youngjae shoots again at him, but misses.

He goes down anyway.

“So this is where all the fun is!” Black Cat says as she deftly hogties Himchan with a length of black cord, though he struggles and protests, eyes crazed. He manages to wriggle out of one restraint around his wrist, but not for long. Black Cat stoops low and opens her palm in front of Himchan’s face, blows powder that glistens pink in the moon light. Himchan’s eyelids droop and he stills immediately, seemingly asleep. Youngjae can hear him breathing.

“Can we agree not to use those cheesy superhero entrance lines?” Youngjae says with considerable effort, blocking a particularly brutal right hook Cobra throws at him.

“Wouldn’t that require you acknowledge you’re a superhero?” Black Cat shoots back.

He hears a camera shutter.

Cobra hears it, too. And he sees Himchan on the ground. Something changes in the way he’s standing; he seems to build himself up, bulkier than before. The rage inside of him makes his skin smoke underneath his costume. “Always,” he heaves. “Taking. _Pictures_.”

He fires his gun, wild, at Daehyun’s approximate location, then fires again and again. None of his shots meet his mark, due to Daehyun’s thankfully quick reflexes -- he’s back behind the lab bench again -- but the blasts shatter the windows behind where Daehyun had stood. The wind howls in, whipping up glass shards, and Youngjae brings his arm over his eyes to shield his face as tiny lines of pain flare up on his arms and legs. Nothing serious, but he’ll have marks he’ll need to cover, later.

“Youngjae!” he hears Daehyun cry out, and he knows he needs to get Daehyun out of here _fast_.

He remembers the maze from the Red Room, and an idea surfaces.

“Keep him occupied,” Youngjae tells Black Cat, who looks at him with exasperation but does as she’s asked, stepping in front of him and jumping into the fray. “And get out of the way when I scream.”

“This better be good!” Black Cat says in response.

Youngjae gauges the distance between the window panels, then considers the fight going on behind him. He shoots webbing to two of the remaining window columns, satisfied when they stick and not wasting a moment to launch himself out of the broken window and into the night sky.

“So you’re running away?!” Black Cat screams after him, but of course Youngjae isn’t running away. He couldn’t leave Daehyun behind.

When the webbing runs out and he’s just about to come down from his upward arc, he lets go and turns to the building again, taking aim quickly, webs catching on the columns for the second time. The pull of his webs is like a giant slingshot, and he yanks himself down, feet first, launching himself back into the building.

And straight into Cobra.

He screams. With not a moment to spare, Black Cat turns, spots him, and rolls out of the way.

Youngjae’s feet connect with Cobra’s ribs, his knees with Cobra’s head. He hears a crack and then he’s rolling, over his own shoulders twice and then back onto his feet, the momentum of his attack carrying him near to the other side of the room, by the door.

It takes a moment for the dizziness to subside, but when it does, he looks at what he's done.

Cobra lays in the middle of the room, unmoving, blood pooling under his head.

Daehyun stands from behind the lab bench slowly. He has a cut on his cheek, probably from a stray piece of glass from when the windows got blown in, but otherwise he’s okay. Youngjae breathes, gulps in air. His fingers are shaking. Daehyun comes around the bench and says, “You got him.”

Youngjae doubles over and tries to keep himself from heaving. His mind conjures up the image of Brian, Daehyun’s hateful step-father, huddled up against the side of his own house, knocked out by Youngjae's hand. He’d been so scared he’d killed him. Does he regret that he hadn’t, that night?

“Kid,” Black Cat says, suddenly right next to him, suddenly patting his back and rubbing his shoulders as nausea roils his stomach. “The first one’s the hardest.”

. 


	8. Chapter 8

The police are there, after, to take Himchan away on a stretcher, his wrists and ankles and torso bound to the cot with tough leather restraints. He’s still unconscious, so Youngjae doesn’t see the point. It makes his stomach turn, seeing Himchan unmoving and heavy, the skin under his eyes bruised, his cheeks thinner and making his face seem sharp and mean. He watches the clean up from the roof of the next building, Daehyun silent by his side, and Black Cat long gone.

“They’ll know it was me,” he’d told the other woman in the costume before they'd left. “My M.O. is everywhere. Himchan--”

“They don’t know who you are,” Black Cat had said. “And your friend won’t remember. The dust I used -- he’ll remember very little about this night. It'll be a little mixed up in his mind. Get out of here, and lay low. This sort of thing--” she’d gestured to the wreckage of the fight, to Cobra’s body and Himchan’s still form, to the glass twinkling everywhere. “--happens all the time when Supers get involved.”

That had sunk a stone in Youngjae’s heart. He didn’t -- doesn’t -- want this to be the sort of thing that happens all the time with him.

He calls Junhong as the blue and red lights dance over the windows and sidewalk far below. Daehyun curls his hand into Youngjae’s, holds on with the lightest, surest touch, reassuring him that he isn't a monster, the answer to Youngjae's unasked question. Junhong picks up before the first ring completes.

“Where are you?” Junhong asks, slightly out of breath. “I’ve been worried sick! I don’t like doing this sort of thing, Youngjae, this radio silence. I’ve decided. Radio silence is no good for me. I need to _know_. I need to--”

“I found Himchan,” Youngjae interrupts, grateful for his friend’s worry. It brings a small smile to his lips as Daehyun steps closer, until they are pressed side by side. “And Cobra. They were working together.”

There is a quick intake of breath on the other end. Then Junhong says, “And where are they now?”

Youngjae hesitates, and squeezes Daehyun’s hand. “Cobra is gone,” he tells him, keeping it vague. “Himchan is being taken in.”

“Oh, Youngjae,” Junhong says sadly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Youngjae says, and hangs up, a clawing feeling rising up in his chest. It's not okay. Himchan had looked so small on that stretcher. He wonders if he’ll wake up in the back of the ambulance, confused and lost. He wonders if he could have done more to prevent this from happening. He’d noticed, hadn’t he? How strung out Himchan had become. If only he’d sought Himchan out sooner, if only he’d listened--

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Daehyun says, and Youngjae doesn’t have to ask to know who he is talking about. Himchan had been Daehyun’s friend, too.

The air up here is like ice. He shivers and thinks of Himchan’s red eyes and drawn face. So much has happened in such a short period of time. He answers honestly, though it hurts him to think of his friend so changed. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’ll remember it was you?” Daehyun asks, his voice barely above a whisper. “He could out you, Youngjae.”

“Black Cat said he won’t remember.”

“She could be wrong.”

Youngjae looks at Daehyun, surprised. Daehyun’s face is pale, his expression guarded, the cut on his cheek brilliant like a gash. So much has happened. Youngjae remembers how they used to meet over the garbage bins in their respective backyards, the orange light at the end of the stick in Daehyun's mouth and how Youngjae wanted to snatch it out from between Daehyun's lips. Fingers curled over the fence. Now, their fingers twine together; through all of this, they've been each other's only constants.

“I thought you loved her,” Youngjae says lightly.

Daehyun lets go of Youngjae’s hand to take up the camera around his neck. He fiddles with the machine for a moment, before turning to Youngjae with a resigned smile. “I think I’m going to take a break from taking pictures of superheroes.”

Daehyun’s head bowed, his lips full and pink, Youngjae kisses him and feels safe. The clawing feeling in his chest disappears as he holds Daehyun close, the wind around them biting into their skin.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry orz the shortest chapter to ever chapter


	9. Chapter 9

Youngjae ducks, the little smoke bomb exploding against the wall behind his head. He shoots Hyosung a glare, but she only shrugs, lifting her arms and revealing a whole row of the nasty little “training” spheres floating behind her. “You’ve gotten soft,” she says, before unleashing them all at Youngjae, a barrage of fist-sized metal globes.

He’ll use webbing to block them. Maybe he can gather them all up out of the air. But his feet stick to the ground and his hands won’t cooperate with him as the smoke bombs seem to change before his eyes into glowing yellow orbs, coming closer and closer. He's frozen. _"Dad, come look at this,"_  he hears.

He holds his hands up as the bombs explode around him, engulfing him in smoke, making his eyes itch and skin tingle.

Somewhere through the fog, Hyosung sighs, and the smoke settles heavy around him. He brings his hands up to rub at his eyes, images of Cobra’s body behind his eyelids. Hyosung cuts through the smoke with her power and it dissipates a moment later, though the itch and burn remains and disgust with himself. She steps forward, her lips pressed together in a thin line.

“You need a break,” she says, though it sounds more like a command.

Youngjae’s fists tighten until he can feel his nails biting into his skin. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll get some water.” He makes to stomp off, angry at himself for failing the training exercise, angry at Hyosung for some other reason he can’t discern. Just angry. He hasn’t felt the same since--

“No,” Hyosung says. “I mean, you need a _break._ You’re all over the place, Youngjae. You’ve got to talk to someone. S.H.I.E.L.D can provide--”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone S.H.I.E.L.D can provide,” Youngjae says mulishly.

Hyosung’s expression is sympathetic as she regards him, eyes softening with pity.

Pity is the worst. Pity is exactly what Youngjae does _not_ need. He killed his best friend’s father. He’s a monster.

“Cobra had been dying, Youngjae,” Hyosung says finally. “He’d been getting weaker by the minute. It was only a matter of time before…”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That he was dying? It’s okay that I killed him because he would have died anyway?”

Hyosung is silent after that, and Youngjae’s brain turns over this new information quickly. Pauses.

“Wait. How did you know he was dying?” he asks accusatorially. 

Hyosung crosses her arms and hesitates, looking around the training room at the corners in the ceiling. Checking for cameras, Youngjae realizes. She whispers, “S.H.I.E.L.D had been keeping tabs on him. We were monitoring how much of a threat he really was. After the explosion at the school...Cobra was classified a much lower threat level.”

“You _knew_ ,” Youngjae says, shock overpowering his anger. “You told me he just wasn’t a priority.”

“He wasn’t _our_ priority,” Hyosung says pointedly, looking at Youngjae. “We knew he would be taken care of.”

S.H.I.E.L.D has always been an organization of secrets, Youngjae thinks. He just never thought things would be so secretive on the inside. That things would be kept from him. That he would be manipulated by the people he thought he could trust.

“And what if I hadn’t taken care of him?” Youngjae asks through gritted teeth.

Hyosung says, “We would have sent someone else in to finish the job.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D is a hard place, Youngjae,” Hyosung says. “There are many levels to this organization. It changes you. Who you are and what you believe. I guess I want to give you a chance to choose.”

Youngjae thinks of Himchan, his dear friend, locked behind padded doors for the foreseeable future. Of Himchan’s father, that distant cold figure Himchan tried both so hard to please and so hard to rattle. Of Junhong and his earnestness in helping Youngjae. Of Yongguk and his warnings about superheroes. He wonders how Jackson and Mark are doing in California -- if they’re even alive, now. He hasn’t heard from them in a while.

He thinks of Daehyun, too. His smile first thing in the morning. His fingers twined with Youngjae’s. His pictures and the hope that laces through his every expression.

He walks out of S.H.I.E.L.D that afternoon, and doesn’t intend to go back.

.

“Wait, so,” Daehyun says, his head pillowed on Youngjae’s arm as they cuddle on the futon stuffed into one corner of Jongup’s bedroom. They lie above the covers, dust motes hovering in the air all around them. “You just walked out?”

The futon is officially Daehyun’s, and Daehyun is officially under his Aunt Mehae’s guardianship. Youngjae asked but Daehyun didn’t want to share all the details with him. Basically, over the past week, his parents had been declared unfit and Aunt Mehae had signed a few papers to bring Daehyun under her roof. He misses his mother, Daehyun tells Youngjae, but this is better. Much better. And Jongup is always at dance practice so it’s like he has the room all to himself, anyway.

“Yup,” Youngjae says. “It’s not -- Being a superhero isn’t what I thought it would be.”

“That’s pretty badass,” Daehyun says. He’s all soft skin and fabric, their sides touching lightly. Daehyun’s hair is pink and blue now, and he looks radiant. “Though I’ll miss waiting for you at Stark Tower.”

“You could start waiting for me at the field,” Youngjae teases, tugging Daehyun closer with his hand over his side, turning so that they’re pressed together chest to chest. Daehyun doesn’t duck his eyes, and Youngjae feels caught, trapped by them. He whispers, “I’m thinking about trying out for the soccer team.”

“You?” Daehyun asks, his lips curling up in amusement. “A team sport?”

Youngjae lets his forehead touch Daehyun’s and closes his eyes at the feeling of this shared space between them. He feels like he’s in a cocoon, warm and safe. “I thought being on a team might be good for my character,” he says.

“I’m sure you’ll make it,” Daehyun tells him, his voice like honey when it’s so close. “Especially if you cheat a little.” Laughing, Youngjae pulls away but Daehyun comes with him, rolling onto his chest instead, head pillowed there over his heart. “Think about it!” Daehyun insists. “You’d make an _amazing_ goalie.”

“Yeah,” Youngjae sighs. His fingers find their way into Daehyun’s hair, playing with the soft strands. Daehyun’s breathing steadies, matching Youngjae’s slow breaths. He thinks about how Junhong had smiled sadly at him when he’d told him he wasn’t returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. The freshman asked if they could still be friends in school, and Youngjae had readily agreed, though over the past few days, he hasn’t seen much of Junhong. He asks, “Do you think I made the right choice?”

“I can’t tell you that, Youngjae,” Daehyun says, and Youngjae exhales slowly. Daehyun continues: “But I can tell you that you’re really brave. And good. You don’t need S.H.I.E.L.D to be a hero, you know? You already were one.”

Youngjae flushes, and Daehyun looks up at him from under his lashes.

“What?” Daehyun asks.

Youngjae stumbles over his words. “It’s just, that word, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it. I don’t -- I don’t know if I’m ready for it. If I’ll ever be ready for it.”

Daehyun hums and darts forward to kiss Youngjae lightly on the lips, the brief touch calming Youngjae immensely. “Whether or not you’re ready for it, that’s what you are,” Daehyun says simply. Maybe it’s always been that simple for him. “You always come through, Youngjae. You’ve always been my hero. Long before you were ever Spiderman.”

They kiss again, the daylight glowing soft gold outside as the sun disappears behind the horizon. Daehyun’s lips are on his and the whole world falls away.

Back home, under his own bed, the briefcase from S.H.I.E.L.D lays waiting, his costume folded neatly inside.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you made it all the way through, omg thank you so much for sticking with me. this took so long and i took many breaks; sorry. i'm happy i finally finished it, though not super happy with the end result...anyway. i hope you enjoyed it at least a little.

**Author's Note:**

> and here i attempt to conclude _the end of the sea_ series with a windy chaptered fic for which i apologize in advance 
> 
> [writing](andnowforyaya.tumblr.com) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)


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